Turning the tide

By Craig Mathieson

September 28, 2017 — 6.48pm

Karina Holden has spent much of her working life in the field of nature documentaries, whether as a researcher and producer, and later commissioning editor, for the ABC, or as a director for National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. But whether the subject was the planet's little seen reaches or the beauty of unfettered wildlife, there was always a polite reminder at work: celebrate the wonder, downplay the environmental dangers.

With Blue, her debut feature film, the lifelong swimmer, surfer and sailor from Sydney's Northern Beaches set out to balance the scales. Holden wanted to fully illustrate the growing risks of permanent destruction to the world's oceans and marine life, yet not scare off audiences or make them feel like they were being berated. She needed to raise not only awareness, but somehow also spirits.

Rubbish is strewn among the trees of a waterway.

"There are a lot of films out there with talking heads and politicians and talk of fighting the machine, of finding an enemy or villain in the corporate figure and bringing them down," explains Holden. "I questioned myself at times because I didn't follow that model. I kept on coming back to Hitchcock, asking myself who was the villain. I realised that the villain is human carelessness – the fact that we forgot to care and that we let this happen."

Holden began shooting in June 2015 – within weeks the World Wildlife Fund released a report that said half of all the planet's marine life had been lost in the past 40 years and that by 2050 there would be more pieces of plastic in the oceans than fish. As the filmmaker and her small, dedicated crew began to travel the globe, outrage or despair appeared to be convenient responses. Staying levelled between Jacques Cousteau​ and Al Gore wasn't easy.

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Blue uses a series of narratives from Ocean Guardians, who are committed activists and ocean workers.Credit:Miranda Brown Publicity

"I was very aware of not being didactic, of keeping it open and creating a space for people to find their own emotion in what they were seeing," Holden says. "A lot of people have said that they never knew they could see something like this that communicates the issues with a gentleness that made them feel safe with what they're experiencing for the first time."

The solution was a structure Holden calls "choose your own adventure": a series of narratives from people with the hashtag-friendly designation of Ocean Guardians, unknown but committed activists and ocean workers looking to make a difference. Blue follows the likes of conservationist Madison Stewart to Lombok, Indonesia, where the shark fin trade is destroying the shark population, and land and sea ranger Phillip Mango, who removes abandoned "ghost nets" from commercial fishing boats that wash ashore on the beaches of northern Queensland and entrap endangered turtles.

Another of the film's Ocean Guardians, who was in Melbourne this week to promote the film with Holden, was Canadian marine scientist Dr Jennifer Lavers. An expert on plastic's pollution of the oceans – it fills the stomachs and can literally chokes seabirds, as well as leaching toxins into fish – Lavers is currently with the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, and her scenes feature handfuls of plastic refuse being pumped from living birds or cut from corpses.

"I really pride myself on breaking free of academia, where you do science for science's sake and communication with the public isn't common practice," says Lavers, who was trailed across Lord Howe Island by Holden. "At some institutes I've previously worked at that's been frowned upon, but I've tried to bring the science and information to the broadest possible public. I challenge myself to reach the broadest possible sector of society and get them engaged. It's a global problem and it requires a global solution."

Coral clings to a rock in a scene from Blue.Credit:Miranda Brown Publicity

Part of the challenge facing Holden was how to shoot the everyday carnage of the ocean's degradation, whether it was shark carcasses lined up on the floor of a fin harvesting facility or the spread of coral bleaching. Her response, together with director of photography Jody Muston and underwater cinematographer Jon Shaw, was to contrast the setting and the outcome. The dead sharks are framed with a clarifying eye, while the camera evocatively shoots from inside a fishing net teeming with cornered sea life.

"I wanted it to be aesthetically pleasing in order to get the bitter pill of what you're watching swallowed. I wanted difficult things to look at to be reflected with some grace and beauty," Holden says. "Catching that glint in the eye where something tragic is unfolding might allow us to sit there and watch it, so elevating the aesthetic of the film was important."

In June, Blue had its world premiere at the United Nations, playing on the floor of the General Assembly during the inaugural Oceans Conference. It was the first audience for a film made to win over those watching, so that they felt enlightened and, Holden hopes, empowered.

"It was important not to get to the end of the film and say that this problem has been solved, that we've wrapped it up with a neat bow where the challenge was set and by the film's end it's reached a pay-off," Holden says. "The idea was for the audience to see themselves in the film so that when they came out at the end the onus comes back to them: what will you do next? Instead of a heroic resolution we gave them ideas and examples."